More on deities and how RPGs treats them.

[Lago_AM3P]

I know this was addressed in FrankTrollman's Dungeonomicon, but I didn't feel like distracting from that important project by complaining.

Basically, the idea that deities are some unbeatable, unstoppable force capable of doing anything is a phenomenom unique to pen and paper roleplaying games.

I mean, in both the actual tale and the silly Disney movie, Hercules could kick the crap out of Hades. This ain't happening in D&D at all--Hades could seriously kill you using just one hand.

I'd say this is a problem with just Dungeons and Dragons, but I've also seen this with Exalted (and to a lesser extent Shadowrun).

I basically want to know where this idea came from and who's responsible for pushing it and why people persist in buying this snake oil. I mean, I think FrankTrollman mentioned that a high level fighter could hunt down Lloth and make a hideous rug out of her in previous editions. Since Lloth can now wrestle and pin fire giants, something went hideously wrong here.

[dbb]

Actually, one of the iconic D&D adventures revolves around you and your friends foiling Lolth's plots in your neighborhood, tracking her down on her own home plane, and beating the living crap out of her. Seriously, this was the plot of some of the most common and famous modules in roleplaying history. If you started playing D&D before Second Edition came out, chances are excellent that you have killed Lolth at least once.

What's more, you were expected to do this around 12th level. The "venture into Lolth's lair and kill her" module had a suggested level range of 10-14.

As for who is responsible for the upgunning of deities: I blame the Christians. Well, not really -- ever since TSR started printing stats for deities, DMs have been complaining that they were too wimpy. And since DMs are generally the people who buy the most product, the results are hardly surprising.

--d.

[Lago_AM3P]

Well, not really -- ever since TSR started printing stats for deities, DMs have been complaining that they were too wimpy. And since DMs are generally the people who buy the most product, the results are hardly surprising.

Why? Except for Jehova himself (who I remind you was wrestled to near-defeat by some dude named Abraham), I have no idea where the claim comes from that deities are supposed to be unbeatable.

Aphrodite, for example, was the goddess of love. Which meant basically that she meddled in peoples' personal affairs with mind control and looked pretty. If some asshole fighter stuck a sword in her guts, who cared?

A PC kills Neptune, so-the-fuck-what? This means that there won't be as many tsunamis and his legions of servants currently don't have a leader.

It can't be because deities are somehow some sort of ceiling for challenges. In other source material, deities are overthrown all of the time and there's still a lot of adventure that hasn't happened yet.

Sir Crocodile (from One Piece) is powerful to an extent that he would have no problem taking on most of the Asgardian pantheon. I mean, he's nearly invincible to physical attacks and can turn miles of land instantly into desert among other things. And he got the crap kicked out of him by a little boy with a wet object.

In fact, one asshole from the same setting (God Eneru) did precisely that--he overthrew the god of Skypiea and installed himself as king asshole. And he's not even the most dangerous character in that setting.

[Josh_Kablack]

What sort of crazy bible are you reading Lago?

I think this is the passage you're talking about

[Lago_AM3P]

Goddamnit, it was Jacob, not Abraham. The pastor failed, obviously.

But yeah. What I remembered most was that ONE OF THE TWO was so hardcore in wrestling God that he got a new name that said 'I kicked god's ass'.

[Desdan_Mervolam]

Actually, when you see gods dying in most religions, it because they were attacked by other gods. Set kills Osiris, Zeus kills Chronos, the Aesir and Vanir collapse in on themselves at Ragnarok, so forth. There are many instances of gods killing uppity humans because they are getting too ballsy for their own good, but I have read exactly zero real legends about mortals who killed gods. And this is because noone in any religion wants people getting it into their head that they can become hardcore enough to beat their celestial sugardaddy.

-Desdan

[Crissa]

Weren't the Greek gods unkillable - well, it'd piss them off, and they'd hafta recover - 'cause they ate ambrosia?

Isn't that why they never really killed each other, and instead did things like lock each other on the far side of the planet like kids told to stay in their room?

-Crissa

[RandomCasualty]

Easily killable gods are a crap idea for a setting. You just can't treat your gods like "just another monster".

First of all, your cleric is serving them, and your cleric can get to epic levels. Is the god granting him more power than the god himself has? It's kinda dumb if the cleric gets to be a higher CR than the guy granting him his power.

Second, destroying a god will rapidly destabilize the game world, and the most effective tactic will simply be god snipe attacks. If a level 20 wizrad can take on a god, then you'll get lots of suicide strikes trying to kill the god. Once he's gone the clerics lose all power. You also have to go through a lot of random plot reasons why nobody has offed a god before if they're so weak and pathetic.

Now you can have gods that can die, but always get reborn or something, that sorta works, if you use some rationale like the god can't bring his full force to bear on the prime material and shows up in some nerfed version of his true self. That's kinda cool and allows PCs to fight godly avatars.

Having the god get permanently offed as though he were some balor or something just leads to a crappy story most of the time. Once the PCs reach godslaying level, all the evil gods are dead basically.

Personalyl I prefer the nonexistent god myself. He can talk to you, he can give you advice and crap, but he doesnt' actually manifest ever. As soon as you get into manifesting gods, most often you get into the no-win situation of deciding whether gods pwn or suxx0r. Either way isn't good for your game, so better not have them appear at all.

[dbb]

While you rarely see gods dying in Greek myth, you very often see them come off second-best to mortals. In the Iliad you even see the god of war get smacked down by a mortal, enough so that he runs off to complain to Zeus about how they're getting too uppity.

Gods who can be defeated make for a much more interesting game than the Bionic Santa Claus (tm Frank) style gods. The problem is having "defeated" not equate to "killed", but there are plenty of ways to solve that.

--d.

[Neeek]

1153545972[/unixtime]]Easily killable gods are a crap idea for a setting. You just can't treat your gods like "just another monster".

And yet, it happens in fiction with some regularity. I can think of over 20 specific examples of a mortal killing a god in just *D&D* fiction.

Second, destroying a god will rapidly destabilize the game world,

Sounds like a plothook to me...

[Hey_I_Can_Chan]

First of all, your cleric is serving them, and your cleric can get to epic levels. Is the god granting him more power than the god himself has? It's kinda dumb if the cleric gets to be a higher CR than the guy granting him his power.

Second, destroying a god will rapidly destabilize the game world, and the most effective tactic will simply be god snipe attacks. If a level 20 wizrad can take on a god, then you'll get lots of suicide strikes trying to kill the god. Once he's gone the clerics lose all power. You also have to go through a lot of random plot reasons why nobody has offed a god before if they're so weak and pathetic.

Now you can have gods that can die, but always get reborn or something, that sorta works, if you use some rationale like the god can't bring his full force to bear on the prime material and shows up in some nerfed version of his true self. That's kinda cool and allows PCs to fight godly avatars.

In Piers Anthony's Incarnations of Immortality series, the gods are offices that mortals ascend to when the guy who was doing the job before gets tired of doing it or screws up. From a D&D perspective, this would mean the cleric worships the idea of the deity, not the deity itself, and that idea is what grants him power. The deity itself might be relatively wimpy, but the folks propping him up--all the servants and so forth who've seen the office change hands throughout eternity but can't assume the offocie themselves--they're hardcore and keep the mere mortals away from the head dude.

This paradigm works. It means that if you can get through the deity's horde of servants, you can gank him, but in a couple of days there'll be a new one… and he might be better or worse than the old. But if the old one's pissed you off enough, that's probably worth the risk.

[RandomCasualty]

1153551419[/unixtime]]While you rarely see gods dying in Greek myth, you very often see them come off second-best to mortals. In the Iliad you even see the god of war get smacked down by a mortal, enough so that he runs off to complain to Zeus about how they're getting too uppity.

Gods who can be defeated make for a much more interesting game than the Bionic Santa Claus (tm Frank) style gods. The problem is having "defeated" not equate to "killed", but there are plenty of ways to solve that.

Yeah, that's why I say you can pretty much use the avatar paradigm if you wanted to. Though honestly, I don't really like the idea of players fighting any kind of direct divine incarnations except as a campaign finale.

After you've fought a god, what is there left to do that can top that?

[Essence]

I can't believe you'd actually say that.

If you can fight a god, and win, there are other characters out there doing/who have done the same. They are your new competition.

IMC, the gods are extremely powerful, but extremely limited -- they can't leave their set of plane(s). That's why they have proselytizers -- because if they get enough followers on Mirrodin, they are actually allowed to go there.

PCs who defeat gods may become gods, but frequently don't because of the itty-bitty living space. There's an entire class of powers out there who are on par with or superior to gods and decide not to become one strictly because they like travelling the universe. There's a lot more adventure to be had trying to survive the Deep Astral long enough to get to the Far Realm and survive that long enough to find the conceptual horrors that birthed the Neo-Thaggul that raped your homeworld clean of arcane magic and defeat them in a realm where literally everything is them-morphic than there is in becomeing the God of Peanuts and basically waiting for people to try to come kick your ass.

[RandomCasualty]

The thing with gods is that you've got a couple of problems:

Bionic Santa Claus: Why don't gods just come down and kill everyone?

Weak sauce: If gods are killable, why are there clerics at all? Eventually the idea of divine power is going to end.

Now, you can come up with nonstandard divine paradigms, like a revolving door god policy, but these aren't the conventional idea of a fantasy god.

The problem is that in fantasy, the pantheons are more or less supposed to stay consistent. You don't have a new god of war replacing Ares every couple of months. And that's the sort of thing that tends to happen when PCs can kill god.

Also, it brings bionic santa claus to an entirely new level. A god that is ultimately close to mortal power level is going to be more likely to take an active role in seeing that nobody challenges him, where as an uber god probably doesn't care if someone gets to level 20 or what not since he can still kick the crap out of them. A god who is always worried someone may off him is going to make a regular appearance on the prime material and make sure to kill off anyone getting remotely close to high levels. By embracing the paradigm of mortal gods, you've got gods running scared, and that's bad when you've got divine level senses and divinations, because it means that Bane is going to be showing up on a regular basis to kill off 8th level characters and soul trap them.

If you're running based on the standard D&D conception of a god, you're best off running around with uber powered gods rather than gods who drop easier than a balor.

Remember as written we have a character class that gets its magic entirely from gods. If gods are so killable at high levels, you're pretty much screwing over your clerics.

[fbmf]

Remember as written we have a character class that gets its magic entirely from gods. If gods are so killable at high levels, you're pretty much screwing over your clerics.

Last year the local phone company went out of business. Some company picked up the service in my area with no interruption in service. Why can't gods work the same way?

Game On,
fbmf

[Neeek]

What if gods had (relative to current levels) little personal power, but were instead a power source that he has some control over(like who can access it)? Killing a god would, under this idea, merely shift the source from the dead god to it's killer or something.

[PhoneLobster]

Last year the local phone company went out of business. Some company picked up the service in my area with no interruption in service. Why can't gods work the same way?

Because like most practical things with dieties RC doesn't like it.

We had this discussion like totally a month or two a go.

If followers are worth having more of then there are no clerics who lack a diety. Because the second they lose one every other diety on the block wants to head hunt them for their flock.

If a clerics god dies or dismisses them then I for one expect to see that cleric approached by recruiters for other dieties within 24 hours.

The same for large communities of worshippers. If the god of spiders dies then the drow are totally going to be standing there with the God of Octopi manifesting before them and saying "Hey whatsup, I got eight legs too! Lets conquer the underdark in MY name."

[Count Arioch the 28th]

What's a Diety?

[Fwib]

1153618741[/unixtime]]What's a Diety?

Any creature with Deific Rank?

Although I guess that's a bit circular...

[RandomCasualty]

1153603581[/unixtime]]
Last year the local phone company went out of business. Some company picked up the service in my area with no interruption in service. Why can't gods work the same way?

Well first, because myths don't work that way. Greek myths have mortals defeating gods, but you don't see Ares replaced by five different guys cause he keeps getting killed. The gods stay consistent.

The thing is that once a guy reaches a high enough level where he can kill gods, then you can pretty much expect he's going to go slaughtering the entire pantheon. And eventually there won't be anyone left to grant spells. Alternately you could have the guy who killed the god become a god, but then again, you really don't want PCs ascending to godhood until the finale of the game.

And generally you don't want your campaign world to work where you're constantly dealing wtih "the god of thunder is dead! Long live the god of thunder!"

Also as far as classifying "what is a deity?" Anything that grants spells IMO is a deity. You may have other things calling themselves gods and having worshippers, but they don't fill the god role in the sense of conventional D&D if they aren't granting spells.

[Username17]

Well first, because myths don't work that way. Greek myths have mortals defeating gods, but you don't see Ares replaced by five different guys cause he keeps getting killed. The gods stay consistent.

Oh... you were serious. That's distressing.

OK, in a pantheonic setting, the gods don't stay constant. New gods join (Dionysus), old gods get removed (Chronos), and gods take over the portfolios of other gods (Apollo kills Python and takes over Divination from Gaia). Really, it happens all the time. It's an integral part of how the whole pantheon thing works.

See, what a pantheon represents is the pet gods of various tribes that are all written into a common narrative as part of a nation-building exercise. Similar gods are announced to be the same god and all disparate elements jumbled into one pacage (which is why Poseidon is the god of The Ocean, Earthquakes, and Horses). Gods with the same portfolios who are incompatable are either announced to be co-owners of the concept, aspects of the same god, or a story is made up about why one god took the power of the other god.

And when someone leaves the band or a new member ribe joins, the pantheon has to be modified appropriately. After most major wars, some gods get exalted, new gods arise, and it is very ossible that some gods will die. This happens all the time.

Gods aren't constant in a pantheon setting. They come, they go, they get replaced by newer gods, and it's not a big deal.

---

The part where it becomes a big deal is the Cleric class. The Cleric class was never really intended to fit into a pantheon setting, and it doesn't really make any sense in that context. The original Cleric couldn't use weapons that drew blood and was quite explicitly a Christian Battle Cleric (all the original Cleric spells were Biblical Miracles). Only later did people try to make Clerics fit the pantheistic model, and that's where things got stupid.

Yeah, if your Cleric gets his power from Odin, then by definition Odin has to be far more powerful than your character is ever going to be - so really getting to kill or replace Odin shouldn't be even conceivable - and that's fvcking stupid. That's not how Odin is supposed to work. That's not how any pantheon is supposed to work.

-Username17

[dbb]

Dark Sun had an interesting concept, where clerics -- well, templars -- got their spells from people who were essentially just really, really powerful mortals. Gods didn't enter into it. You could eventually get powerful enough to kill one of said really powerful mortals, and that was just part of the game -- those who'd gotten spells from them either had to find another patron, or they got screwed. A situation like that -- where the deity is basically a conduit, rather than being /personally/ powerful enough to imbue you with the power to throw fire from the skies -- strikes me as being potentially plausible for a game, but without a whole lot of antecedents in source material.

--d.

[Desdan_Mervolam]

I've said I don't like the Mortal Gods paradigm, but let me play Devil's Advocate here for a moment. See, even in a setting where the gods are entirely mortal, or even mortals pretending to be superpowered, you're not nessissarily going to have situations where gods die on a regular basis.

See, RC is making the mistake of thinking that just because a character has the potental to do something it doesn't mean they will, and I'm not even talking about min-maxing.

The first thing you need to realize is that not everyone with PC classes reaches level 20. The second is that not every PC reaches level 20. And that's not even nessissarily the goal to be able to do it either, that's an arbitrary level value I picked because it's really high, I figure most DMs will stat gods higher.

Seriously, check the City generator in the DMG. Classed PCs get rarer as they get higher in level. Some of them never got past stealing pocket change out of their neighbor's purse or running the local watch, some people(casters) could never get their stats high enough to continue their class, and some people get eaten by trolls. Even with Death as cheap as it is in 3.X, no world could sustain a culture capable of producing someone capable of killing a god any faster than maybe once every 100 years.

Still too often for you? Good. Because what I wrote above assumes that the gods are just sitting around waiting for your assault. And frankly, that's stupid. Deities and Demigods states that all gods know the identity and location of anyone speaking their name and/or dabbling in their portfolio immediatly, if not weeks in advance. Frankly, that's not an unreasonable postion to have, since according to lots of genre literature, powerfully evil MORTALS can do the same thing. And well, the great thing about being a god is that you can inform people who rely upon you for your power that you want to take him away from them and then notify them of your current if not future location. And hey, that's assuming the god, for some reason, doesn't want to/can't come to you personally and squash you like a bug long before you get to a threatening power level (And really, there are only two reasons why a god wouldn't: a)The setting cosmology is set up so they CAN'T [like Ess' setup], or B) The DM doesn't want to be accused of PC abuse. Only one of those reasons is viable from a mythological standpoint, and it's not B).

-Desdan

[Draco_Argentum]

The definition of god appears to be "a powerful entity who lives somewhere inaccessible." So mortals don't get to meet them unless they're already dead. If you happen to be a great hero you get to meet them and maybe beat them without being dead.

Only the Christian God breaks that mold since nothing can beat Him. But I think thats the only omnipotent entity. But for the rest of mythology it holds pretty well.

Sidenote for Stargate fans, the Auri are gods.

[Ramnza]

Yeah, if your Cleric gets his power from Odin, then by definition Odin has to be far more powerful than your character is ever going to be - so really getting to kill or replace Odin shouldn't be even conceivable - and that's fvcking stupid. That's not how Odin is supposed to work. That's not how any pantheon is supposed to work.

What are you suggesting then? That when a PC becomes powerful enough he or she can take on the god that gave them their powers in the first place? It all seems a little like biting the hand that feeds you.